


Railcar

by 0KKULTiC



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Drabble, M/M, NSFW, Smut, Train Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 06:16:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14805912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0KKULTiC/pseuds/0KKULTiC
Summary: Kang Daniel encounters a handsome stranger many times on his trips home on the train. He starts to look forward to it.





	Railcar

**Author's Note:**

> // The following work is unedited and will contain increased grammatical and spelling errors.
> 
> // I recommend listening to railcar background noises to enhance the reading experience.   
> (link: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/railroadNoiseGenerator.php)

**The first time**

 

Daniel sees him in the spring.

 

People fill the subway car to the brim, overflowing sediments of the overworked lifestyle society decides to impose on its people. Individuals attempt politeness to the best of their ability, skirting around one another; they pretend that there exists space between them and that their clothes aren’t awkwardly brushing and rustling against each other. 

 

Daniel walks on and stands, vice grip on one of the straps hanging above. He’s tall, so he holds it with ease. More bodies shift and swirl around him, squeezing between and ducking beneath; the faces let out utterances of condolences, “Sorry” or “Excuse me” they say. It doesn’t matter, it’s all the same. Everyone there is just trying to get from point A to point B, from work to home or maybe a bar with their friends. It’s a time of transition and transformation.

 

With his headphones plugged in, the tall dance student standing couldn’t care less about where he or she or they or whatever face invaded his space was going. The same music he listened to drones on in his ears as he wobbles along with the churning railcar. Another day, another departure, another trip home to his cats.

 

Another stop.

 

Just as many people dash in as they rush out; even without the pressure of needing to punch in, people move with some kind of a frantic urgency. It always annoys Daniel. He feels himself get jostled around by a few more people; some stragglers had willed themselves to fit into the railcar despite it probably being unsafe.

 

After stumbling from yet another person bumping into him, the student finds his footing, and the train resumes. He frowns inwardly, tired of train rides, tired of school, tired of everything. He readies himself for another long, dull commute, but something catches his gaze.

 

Just at the corner of his gaze, among the people there is a person; a face prevails among all the other human-like approximations. He stands wedged in a corner across the car, pressed against a pole and the door. His eyes have a far away look in them.

 

Daniel stares.

 

He stares his whole ride, tracing and retracing the striking features of this mysterious man. He was the kind of stranger that Daniel knew he would never forget; the kind of person that he would fantasize about leading a life with just because he’d encountered him once. He commits those features to memory: the well sculpted jaw, thin lips and dark eyes. His suit drapes loosely from his slender frame, and an ID card hangs around his neck. Some kind of a salaryman, Daniel thinks.

 

He makes sure he remembers this mysterious man on the train, because he knows he will never see him again. Bodies and faces shift and shuffle around him but the man remains steady, constant, and so does Daniel’s gaze.

 

The student’s stop comes, and suddenly Daniel wishes that his commute was just a little longer. He already misses the concept of the man in front of him. The student begins making up a story in his head: that He works in tech, that He’s a recent college graduate, that He likes animals and pop music and laughs easily.

 

The population had thinned out by the time Daniel stands up to reach the door of the car. That is when, finally, the man acknowledges the other’s existence. Though it’s probably out of courtesy, the man with the dark eyes glances at Daniel so he can move out of his way. 

  
Their eyes lock, and Daniel feels the other’s gaze suck him in like a vortex. The passing moment drags on for years. It isn’t until Daniel steps onto the platform, his head craned back to maintain the contact, that the moment breaks. The train doors shut with a loud hiss, and it quickly picks up its journey toward the next stop.

 

Suddenly, Daniel is home. Well, close to home. The man fills his thoughts for the rest of the evening, thoughts of an impossibly dreamy relationship with an impossibly dreamy person. He thanks his mom for dinner and mutters something generic when she asks “How was your day?”. When he’s done shoving food down his throat he tries to focus on homework, focus on gaming, on texting his friends, on anything else; but, his mind always goes back to him.

 

Daniel resigns himself to the fact that he’ll never encounter that stranger again, and writes him off as some fantasy, a hot guy he saw once on the train.

 

* * *

 

**The second time**

 

It happens again, a day later.

 

This time Daniel is looking at his phone when it happens. The train stutters to a stop, making the bodies inside it bob and shift and trip ever so slightly. The doors open with the familiar hissing noise and soon the expectant commotion of impatience sets in. Daniel doesn’t care. He scrolls his feed, idly tapping the tiny hearts on his screen at amusing things that pass his gaze. He can’t wait to get home and pet his cats; he’s hungry, he’s bored.

 

That’s when he gets blindsided.

 

The usual slew of default courtesies are thrown around, per usual, the “Pardon me”s and “Excuse me”s. One reaches Daniel’s ear and he looks up. 

 

He’s so close, Daniel realizes; he’s so,  _ so  _ close.

 

Against all odds, the student shares the same car as Him again. Daniel shuffles slightly to get out of His way; his heartbeat pauses along with time itself as he carefully watches the man scoot by him. He takes a spot in front of the student, slender fingers looping through one of the worn straps hanging above them.

 

Awe freezes Daniel in his place. He’s even more beautiful up close. Daniel thanks God as he silently paints a picture of his life with the man once more. With their close proximity, the student makes out even more discerning qualities: subtly big ears pierced with round, black studs, multiple birthmarks.

 

There’s a bag slung over his shoulder which supports Daniel’s salaryman theory. A nametag hangs out, and the student can’t believe his eyes when he reads it. He reads it and reads it and reads it again.

 

There’s no way his name can be Ong Seongwoo, right?

 

Ong?

 

_ Ong _ ?

 

Daniel knows he’s blushing, but he doesn't care. It doesn’t matter, nobody who mattered would see him working himself up over a stranger anyways. The only person that mattered to him stands in front of him, oblivious.

 

Daniel thanks God once more that he had the opportunity to share space with someone so striking. 

 

He wishes he could have someone like that in his ordinary life, someone who makes his heart flutter and his pulse race, a person who sets his very being on fire by simply existing.

 

But he doesn’t.

 

So he stands there and prays; prays to God that he may have courage to speak, prays to god that he may see Him again, prays to God that He may approach him.

 

Alas, God’s delivery doesn’t quite reach his doorstep.

 

* * *

 

**The summer time**

 

Summer is probably unanimously the worst time to take the train. The sun spends the year wholly ignoring the city; then, it suddenly remembers Seol’s particularly gloomy corner of planet earth and, like a student cramming the night before exams, it beams down without rest. Mercilessly, for a couple of months, it reminds the people beneath it that it is, in fact, not a myth. 

 

“I’m here! Rejoice!” The sun yells loudly at anyone not fortunate enough to find an inky patch of shade to slink under. Everything melts and blurred visions, mirages bend the very air in front of a person.

 

Railcars multiply these effects exponentially.

 

Daniel steps onto the car, stray hairs already slicked to his forehead with sweat. 

 

More people commute that day than usual, and who can blame them?

 

With temperatures floating around 36, even the clogged intestines of the train system are favorable to braving the outdoors. It results in a double-edged sword. While the train is equipped with an air conditioning system, the sheer amount of body heat radiating off of the figures crammed into the transport mitigate the refreshing effects of flowing air.

 

The student doesn’t bother move into the car so much as he’s pushed into a remote corner toward the front. He doesn’t mind. Even on his lowest days, he has something to look forward to.

  
After a few stops He steps on.

 

Daniel hadn’t realized it initially, but God heard him. 

 

Ever since that first, fateful day, He, Ong Seongwoo, has scarcely missed his evening commute. Like clockwork, just two stops after Daniel’s he stops onto the platform in some combination of suit and tie. He had different fits and different colors. It doesn’t matter. Never did. He looked jaw dropping in all of them.

 

And so Daniel’s jaw dropped. 

 

Day after day he watched this man, Ong. 

 

Daniel can remember ever conversation they’ve had. 

 

They were short, always short.

 

He remembers the first thing Ong had said to him.

 

He’d bumped into him on a rainy day in spring and uttered, “Sorry, excuse me.”

 

Once, Ong’s nametag dropped from his bag. Daniel crossed the aisle to pick it up for him, even boldly sparking conversation by saying, “Ong? That’s a unique last name.” Ong told him he got that often, and even gave him a courteous smile. It made Daniel’s heart skip like a schoolgirl playing hopscotch. He swears up and down that he’d even caught Ong looking at him a few times. It’s a story he sticks to; clings to, really.

 

The student waits expectantly when the train slowly rolls to a stop. He tries to get a decent look at the door, thanking God for his height; he wouldn’t have seen a thing otherwise.

 

Ong walks in looking as stunning as ever. He wears the sheen of sweat on his skin like a glowing veil of stars. He moves to loosen his tie and undoes the top few buttons of his shirt. It reminds Daniel that even the miserable summer heat does the world a service sometimes.

 

Suddenly a torrent of bodies rushes through the entrance.

 

Ong is swept up in the undertow, shunted inwards. The student loses sight of him for a second and the doors close, sealing in the last few rushed commuters. It’s packed, and Daniel can’t help when his head whips around in search of his crush. He can feel the hard corners of the train car dig into his back and someone’s bag squashing him from the front.

 

They might as well be canned.

 

“Sorry, excuse me.” A low voice calls out.

 

Daniel blinks and looks down, directly in front of him. He was so focused on looking toward the entrance, he never looked near him.

 

His heart nearly jumps out of his throat and out of the train. He isn’t sure if he feels like he’s vibrating from ecstasy or if it’s just the shaking of the train. He doesn’t care, because he’s right next to Him. The person squashing him is Ong. His Ong. His dream man. The guy he’d been spending the past months fantasizing about.

 

“It’s okay.” Daniel says, hoping he sounds cool and that he doesn’t look too much like he’s melted under the summer sun. He can’t even savor the closeness much before the train screeches to another stop.

 

In one door, out the other, more people enter than depart. A resonating chorus of “Excuse me”s and “Sorry”s encapsulate the car in a hum of white noise. More people elbow their way into the front corner of the car, and if Daniel wasn’t reeling before, he sure as hell is now. When the train jumps back into movement, the collective population stumbles, as does Ong along with it. His bag manages to slide to the wayside, and other bodies box them in. As he stumbles, the working man can only catch himself by extending an arm in front of himself. It accomplishes little more than pinning Daniel further to the side of the railcar.

 

Butterflies flutter manically inside Daniel’s chest when the situation comes to fruition. He feels sick and dizzy and like he’s going to faint. Pressed up against him chest to chest is the most gorgeous man he’d ever seen. 

 

He opens his mouth because he wants to say something: something cool, something reassuring, something enticing or witty or funny. He closes his mouth when he realizes that he can’t say anything. Not a word. Not a syllable. Nothing will come out because the man in front of him paralyzes him. Even being pinned by a complete stranger, he can’t utter a sound.

 

Ong looks like he’s in a similar predicament. He opens his mouth and the student swears he can hear “Sorry”, but that’s about it. It quickly closes. The train jostles again; it must have been moving faster or something, Daniel can’t remember ever having such a bumpy ride. Then again, it may be the front to front friction that intensifies every little wibble and wobble.

 

The student’s pupils dance; they look this way and that, read the ads, look at the security notices. Anything to avoid looking at the man in front of him. He wonders if that’s how Orpheus felt, disallowed from looking upon Persephone's beauty. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter so much what his eyes can or cannot perceive. He knows Ong is there. He feels Ong there. He feels...

 

Humiliation.

 

Utter humiliation.

 

As if the blanket of humid air isn’t enough, a new rush of hotness burns Daniel’s insides to a crisp. He deliberately avoids the other’s gaze. He wants to die immediately.

 

His sweatpants do little to hide it. There’s no doubt that Ong, pressed up against him closer than white on rice, can feel it. It’s not even just a little or half there; Daniel sports a full blown hard-on on the train, in the middle of peak travelling hours. He tries to pretend it isn’t happening, turns his head away. The more he thinks about it the harder it gets (to ignore it). 

 

The poor man in front of him is probably repulsed. He probably feels violated, he probably wants to call the police. And with good reason! Daniel is already thinking of alternative routes home, considering how he can assure that his and Ong’s paths never cross again.

 

Another bump.

 

Another collective commotion.

 

Another instance of friction.

 

Daniel’s mind stops functioning.

 

He doesn’t compute.

 

This doesn’t add up.

 

His pupils remain fixed on a sign across the car, some ad for an insurance company; but he can’t mistake it. The friction, the feeling; it wasn’t something rubbing against nothing. It was something rubbing against something. His heart swells and beats so much it chokes him. He doesn’t dare look because he doesn’t want to break the spell, so he just stands. He stands there and Ong stands there and they both stand there.

 

Two guys.

  
Two regular guys.

 

Two hard-ons sandwiched between two guys rubbing up on one another on a crowded train.

 

Daniel knows he shouldn’t but he looks anyways. Just a tiny glance, a millisecond to indulge. He feels grateful knowing Ong wasn’t staring him down or anything like that. His face looks as content and disinterested as ever (and Daniel knows that because he looks at the man’s face a lot). The salaryman’s dark eyes rest on a window a few meters away; he casually looks out as if it’s the most normal thing in the world: grinding against a man on the train.

 

The dance student’s mind does more than wander. Despite himself, despite his manners and what his mother told him, he sears this memory into the brain with the rest of them; he memorizes the way the  hard-on’s outline feels against his own. It’s like Daniel imagined it would be; proportional and slender like him. The student bets it’s really pretty like him, too.

 

He hears little noises and wonders if it’s Satan writing his name down on the Hell admission list.

 

Turns out it’s just the train reaching another stop.

 

Eventually, it thins out, as it always does. Even in peak times, the further one went out, the fewer people boarded. 

 

Daniel’s nerves flare up once more. His gray shorts show everything, and he has to get off soon knowing that fact. Not only that, but, there’s a man still pressed up against him. Even though there were now plenty of spaces to stand and sit, Ong remains planted firmly in front of Daniel. It just occurs to the student how weird that is. 

 

Maybe he doesn’t want to be embarrassed either, Daniel thinks.

 

The student’s stop arrives, and he tactfully shrugs his backpack off of his shoulder so he can block his indecency from common view. He doesn’t look at Ong, he doesn’t say anything. He slides out from his position pressed beneath the other and leaves. Roaring fires of humiliation and arousal rip through him as he exits the station.

 

He rushes home and runs up his stairs. The second his door shuts he stuffs his hand down his pants remembering what Ong felt like.

 

* * *

 

**The night time**

 

Daniel looks at his phone impatiently. The letters read:

 

01:27 AM

 

He groans.

 

Late night crunching does that. It distorts space-time at a whim turning hours into seconds and minutes into days. It’s exam season and no matter how many times Daniel tells his mom he’ll get home at a reasonable hour, he still ends up in the library long past advisable curfew. Whatever. He doesn’t care. What’s done is done.

 

He just wants to go home. So he waits, the only soul on the lonely platform in the god forsaken train station. Everything feels so weird when it’s empty, he thinks. He only traverses via train during busy hours, the morning and night rush hours. During night everything echoed loudly off the ceiling and down the dark black abyss of a tunnel. The ads on the digital screens just feel infinitely more loud, their lighting almost offensively bright, the models pictured smiling almost too nicely.

 

Daniel hears the train from kilometers away; at least, he feels like it’s kilometers away. The sound builds up until the deafening roar finally reaches him. The brakes howl as it eases to a stop.

 

The car is empty.

 

Daniel happily plops down into the nearest seat before zoning out. 

 

He thinks of Ong.

 

He always thinks of Ong on the train. 

 

He still remembers all too well what he thinks of as the most embarrassing encounter with a crush he’s had in his life. But it was fine. Everything was fine.

  
The next day, he saw Ong. Maybe Ong even saw him. Neither said a word. Life went on. And on and on and on and on.

 

Daniel hasn’t heard even an “excuse me” since, but he’s okay with that. He’s relieved that he didn’t have a police report filed against him or a restraining order. He’s surprised that Ong still managed to get on the same car as him every day. Of course, with his nights running so late, it’s been a few since Daniel had seen his crush.

 

He’s fine with it, or anything, really, at this point.

 

The subway stops.

 

Nobody gets on.

 

It continues.

 

Daniel listens to music and fights sleep.

 

The subway stops.

 

Nobody gets on.

 

It continues.

 

The subway stops.

 

Somebody gets on.

 

It continues.

 

Daniel blinks. 

 

It’s not like a single other person on the train is of much relevance to him; he’s just surprised. His eyes move faster than his mind and he looks.

 

His eyes widen.

 

His heart lurches.

 

He looks down.

 

It’s him. 

 

It’s Ong.

 

Why is Ong here?

 

Daniel begins wondering if the man is stalking him, but, no, that wouldn’t make sense. He’s never followed from his stop, he’s never seen Ong in the morning- or any other time, really. His ears turn a shade of red and he thinks that maybe, just maybe Ong won’t notice it’s him or will forget it’s him.

 

Ong sits down across from Daniel. He doesn’t look at the student, doesn’t dignify his existence with any kind of acknowledgement. The (presumably) older man looks tired. Perhaps he’d been doing his own form of cramming, however, it applied to professional life. It looks like his tie had long been ditched and his hair falls more flatly than usual.

 

The train carries on along its merry way. Being a later line, it doesn’t take all the stops it typically does, resulting in long pauses. Nothingness.

 

Then suddenly, somethingness.

 

_ Screeeech! _

 

_ Thud! _

 

Sudden noise, sudden stumbling, Daniel nearly falls out of his seat. Ong does.

 

A voice calls out on the intercom, “We are sorry for the inconvenience! It appears that there has been an obstruction on the tracks. Please remain seated or stand still while this issue is resolved. We thank you for your patience, and thank you for riding with KORAIL…  _ Click _ .”

 

Daniel looks down to see papers spread across the aisle. His reflexes make him jump to help gather them immediately. When he’s collected a decent pile of them, he turns to the man in front of him.

 

Oh yeah, he thinks, that’s right. It’s Ong.

 

For the first time in forever, their eyes meet. Daniel’s mouth falls open. Ong swallows. The student shakily extends his fistful of papers. He eyes one thoughtlessly; they’re covered in gibberish. Formulas.

 

Ong takes the papers from Daniel wordlessly. He gives a half-assed smile as a gesture of “thanks”, and Daniel happily takes it, he doesn’t deserve any more than that. The two still eye each other up and down as they stand up, ready to return to their respective seats.

 

_ Squeak! _

 

The train chooses that moment to jump forward. Apparently, it’s ready to move again.

 

“Thank you for your patience, we will resume the route as regularly scheduled. Thank you again for riding with KORAIL...Click.”

 

It would have been nice to warn us  _ before  _ you started moving, Daniel thinks. But the damage is done. He’s tripped, and so has Ong. God had answered Daniel’s prayers once; now, the student imagines, he’s collecting his debt by playing tricks on him. 

 

When the train had lurched forward, it sent the two colliding once more.

 

Daniel tries to stabilize Ong, attempting to catch him, but their arms just get tangled up. When the student falls back into his seat, instead of saving Ong, he pulls the man onto him.

 

The two look at one another wide-eyed. Daniel’s stomach flips and his heart buzzes. Once again he searches for words, but nothing comes out, not a peep. Their eyes are fixed, completely unable to shake one another. Daniel notices Ong’s tongue flick out from between his lips. He still hasn’t gotten off of him. The student has to suppress his instinct to grab the man by the hips because that sure as hell is not right.

 

None of this is right.

 

He’s just a student on the train after spending too long in the library and he needs to keep his hormones under control and the man on top of him is straddling him and- what?

 

Ong straddles Daniel, deliberately positions himself.

 

The student swallows hard even though there’s nothing to swallow. The older man’s eyes look dark, so impossibly dark. Daniel’s mind cries out for the sake of decency for the sake of purity for the sake of anything. Stop, stop, stop!

 

But he can’t.

  
He can’t help himself.

 

He doesn’t help himself; he puts his hands on Ong’s hips. The professional’s dark orbs look the student up and down; the student’s reciprocate. They size each other up before meeting again. Daniel bites his lip, and Ong seems to like that, a lot. He watches with immense focus.

 

The train screeches to another stop.

 

A twinge of panic surges up in Daniel’s chest, but his eyes are too busy taking in the sight of beauty before him, he doesn’t care.

 

Nobody gets on.

 

The train continues.

 

Ong leans down and whispers. Daniel can barely hear the words over the rattling of the train cars, but he understands them. God, does he understand them:

 

“I want you. Do you want me?”

 

Simple. Direct. To the point.

  
Daniel likes Ong even more for that, and he responds, simple, easy:

 

“God, Yes.”

 

They collide this time with purpose, a collision of lips and tongues. An impatience is palpable between them. They move fast and sloppy and they bounce and jostle with the unsteady train and somehow that makes it so much hotter. Daniel can feel Ong’s hard-on rub against his own and it’s ten million times better knowing that it’s reciprocated for the right reasons. 

 

Well, right is a relative term in the context of their situation.

 

Realistically it’s all very, very wrong, but they’re too far gone to care, giving into months worth of lust, boiling over into one another.

 

Ong grinds against Daniel’s hard on and bites on his lower lip, and Daniel quickly adds that the the rapidly growing list of things he likes about Ong. The student moans beside himself and he briefly wonders if he’d hit his head when the train had stopped and was actually unconscious.

  
Dream or not, he enjoys himself.

 

He figures God can smite him at his leisure. Should he die in the arms of the hot guy from the train, he will die a happy man; by this he stands. Of course, only figuratively. He can’t stand, not with Ong on top of him, undoing his own belt buckle.

 

Stop it, stop it, this is a terrible fucking idea, stop it; that’s what Daniel would typically think.

 

But nothing is typical.

 

The train screeches to another stop.

 

They don’t care, too busy brutalizing one another’s faces, grasping and grabbing and groping hips and ass and dick.

 

Nobody gets on.

 

It continues.

 

Ong slides his hand underneath the waistband of Daniel’s joggers and starts tugging. Daniel returns the favor, unzipping the other’s pants and pulling down the waistband of the other’s boxer-briefs. 

 

They’re fully aware that should any eye catch them in the act, they’d be arrested to say the least. They’re fully aware the mark on their record could end their lives, get them fired from jobs, expelled from school, ousted from civilian society.

 

They’re fully aware that they don’t care.

 

Ong mewls as he rocks his hips into Daniel’s touch and it drives the student crazy. He feels so close, but he hangs on for dear life, wanting to enjoy every last second of the fever dream that materialized in front of him. 

 

He wants more, so much more. He wants to caress every last centimeter of Ong’s body, he wants to know how he feels, know about his life, but he can’t; so he greedily takes what’s in front of him. Stars blotch out spots in Daniel’s vision as he nears his point of no return. 

 

The train screeches to a stop.

 

Nobody gets on.

 

They keep going.

 

Moans and whines and mutters of swear words dribble from the edges of their lips as they near the end of the line. 

 

It’s too much, Daniel thinks. It’s too much. He quakes, coming with moans that will probably embarrass the hell out of him when looks back. Pressure spills over, hotness dripping down into the nooks and crannies of Ong’s busy fingers. Even with the haze, it makes Daniel want to work harder, want to do what Ong did for him. He attacks the other’s face with newfound vigor, and the older man seems to appreciate it if his little cries are any indication. He shudders, pressing his head against the student’s shoulder as he comes, expletives pouring out from his throat.

 

Daniel’s hand feels hot and sticky and objectively kind of gross, but he doesn’t care. The two gasp as they catch their breath; the reality of what they’d just done didn’t seem to phase them just yet.

 

The train starts to slow down.

 

“This is my stop.” Ong mutters. He looks at his hand, and that’s when the shame sets in. He quickly rights himself, wiping his hand off on his underwear before stuffing himself back in and closing his pants up. He hadn’t even taken off his bag.

 

Daniel can only watch in his post orgasm daze.

 

Ong shuffles out quickly, and the doors close again with the familiar hissing noise. It occurs to Daniel that his stop is long gone and that he’d need to take a cab back home now. He tucks himself back into his pants and wipes his own hand on the pant leg. He momentarily begs God not to let his mom notice the conspicuous marks when she did the laundry.

 

The train crawls along, taking some time before finally reaching its next stop.

 

When it does, Daniel unlocks his phone to call a cab. The rest of his night is spent in a daze, contemplating what had just happened, if it was even real. 

 

He decides he needs sleep.

 

* * *

 

**The beginning**

 

Daniel frowns as he tugs his hood down closer to his face. Typical, he thinks: I  _ would  _ be caught in the rain when I leave my umbrella home. Thankfully he finds shelter as he descends the steps to the familiar train platform.

 

A few nerves set in as he waited for his train to arrive. Never in his existence did he think he’d associate trains with sex but life has a funny way of throwing curveballs at a person. Even though he felt anxious, he knows it’s stupid.

 

He hadn’t seen Ong the day after their little rendezvous, nor the day after that, or the day after the day after that. It’d been nearly a week since he’d seen the other guy, and at this point he’s given up. It got Daniel wondering: 

 

What if Ong really wasn’t real?

 

What if nothing was real at all?   
  


Or what if Ong was some kind of exhibitionist with a train fetish who singled out hopeless looking types?

 

Had the working man managed to deliberately find Daniel’s car every time? 

 

The train screeches to a halt, and Daniel steps on per usual. It’s sparse due to the holiday weekend; many people had the day off. He lets his music drown out any other noise and stares off in the distance. Bodies move in, bodies move out. Faces utter their “Pardon me”s and apologies. The train races along the metal tracks, occasionally bumping or lurching or scrambling slightly.

 

Daniel is tired, tired of school, tired of people, tired of trains. He thinks about his cats and about what’s for dinner that night. He’s starving. He thinks about how he shouldn’t think about Ong, then thinks about him anyways; the line of thought stings him with bitterness. It doesn’t get any better as the train hisses, stopping at the salaryman’s usual station.

 

The student purses his lips and purposely averts his eyes. He doesn’t want to see Ong, but even more, he doesn’t want to not see Ong. He doesn’t want to be faced with the fact that the man never wanted to see him again, that he’d been used for the pathetic sap he is. 

 

He didn’t want to, but he did anyways.

 

Daniel’s traitorous eyes sneak a peek at the open door. Bodies file in, more orderly than usual, and he’s about to look away until suddenly a familiar, slender figure darkens the doorway.

 

He looks different than usual. His features are covered by a mask and his appear look a bit more red and tired than usual. Ong’s eyes catch Daniel, and Daniel immediately shies away. Heat stings his cheeks and stains his ears red. He suddenly realizes that he hadn’t quite prepared for the “morning after” talk, let alone the “week after” talk. The train goes about on its merry way as if the two people who had debauched its car weren’t standing in it.

 

The agony quickly eats away at Daniel, and he decides he can’t bear it any longer, any of it. He doesn’t know what to say or what Ong will say or what either of them will say, but he knew if he didn’t say anything, he’d burst. 

 

It takes two stops for Daniel to collect himself. He gathers every ounce of courage and social grace and luck that he possibly could muster. Taking a deep breath, he turns toward where Ong stands and jumps.

 

Apparently, Ong had had a similar idea, and he’d beaten Daniel to the punch, already face to face with the student.

 

Daniel can feel the inferno of embarrassment burning him from his toes to his ears. His resolve begins to dissolve, and his mouth flaps open, completely aimless. 

 

The train slows down until it screeches to a stop.

 

Ong speaks. He simply asks:

 

“You hungry?”

 

Despite himself, Daniel replies:

 

“Yeah.”

 

Ong nods toward the railcar’s doors as the slide open, and starts walking toward the platform.

 

Daniel follows.

**Author's Note:**

> // This is a work of fiction and is meant to be read as such. None of the people or brands described in this piece are my own.


End file.
